From enquirer.com: Cincinnati's new plan to cut gun violence could hit its key phase in July: face-to-face meetings between Cincinnati criminals, their grandmothers and other influential people.

The most important part of the project will be involvement by neighborhood residents and their insistence not only that violence is wrong, but also "that the community needs it to stop," said crime expert David Kennedy.

Kennedy is the anthropologist credited with the "Boston miracle," which cut homicides there in the 1990s. The Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence copies his plan.

Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, explained his work for the first time Saturday to the public in Cincinnati at the second annual Community Problem Oriented Policing Summit.

In some communities in Cincinnati, Kennedy said, the violence will continue "until their own say to them, 'There is no excuse for this. We know you're better than this. We didn't raise you like this.' "

That word has to come not only from grandmothers, Kennedy said, but elders on their blocks, old ex-convicts, mothers of murdered children and mothers of killers.

Their message will be delivered something like this: About 20 "gang bangers" - one each from previously identified groups that are known to commit murders - will be called to a meeting by their parole or probation officers. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]